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Topic: ESA M5 Science Mission Competition (Read 16594 times)

Proposals for ESA fifth medium class science mission have been submitted. I'm starting this thread to 1) collect a list of missions proposed and then 2) discuss the finalists following their announcement in June.

If the Heavy Metal Psyche probe flies, it will make the Discovery Psyche probe look woefully under-powered. Here's their list of proposed instruments:

Quote

Optical Imager (NAC)

Wide Angle Camera (WAC)

Infrared Imager/Spectrometer (IR)

UV Spectrograph (UVS)

(Sub-)Surface Radar

Magnetometer (MAG)

Plasma Spectrometer Package

Electric field and Cold Plasma

Radio Science Experiment

That's 8 compared to Psyche's 3! Crazy! If that wasn't enough their page goes on to mention including a cubesat with their mission. Ambitious to say the least, although I'd assume ESA would view such ambition as skeptically as their American counterparts would in mission evaluation.

That's 8 compared to Psyche's 3! Crazy! If that wasn't enough their page goes on to mention including a cubesat with their mission. Ambitious to say the least, although I'd assume ESA would view such ambition as skeptically as their American counterparts would in mission evaluation.

instruments are not included in cost cap, so why not load all of them in one mission...

(Though there may be some problems with such things as power and mass margins.)

I wonder if unsuccessful M4 finalists will be considered for M5 as was done with PLATO (lost M2 selection against Euclid, won M3). M4 decision is supposed to happen around the same time as the selection of M5 finalists.

I suspect this was done to ensure the exoplanet community didn't give up proposing so ESA wouldn't be left without the choice. As far as I know there was no similar statement after the M4 selection.

I know some X-ray astronomers and I'm getting the feeling that the high-energy community is becoming as desperate as exoplanet people were a few years ago. There's Athena, but it's still more than a decade away.

Well that's ESA's decision based on their strategic needs. Besides, X-rays has XIPE in M4 and even if an X-ray mission was selected for M5 it isn't going to launch any sooner than Athena. At least X-rays has a flagship!

I would expect a lot of missions getting eliminated by technical/cost evaluation. Some of the proposed missions don't look very M-class to me (though maybe they have plans for significant contributions from NASA/JAXA/Chinese/Russians/someone else).

Will not the cost of the forthcoming orbital gravitational wave observatory impact all these kind selections?

Why would L3 mission that is almost two decades from launch have any effect here? I'm also not sure why you think a gravitational wave mission would be especially costly (more so than any other large-class mission). ExoMars stuff, on the other hand, could have an effect if they go ahead with plans to divert money from science budget.

Will not the cost of the forthcoming orbital gravitational wave observatory impact all these kind selections?

Why would L3 mission that is almost two decades from launch have any effect here? I'm also not sure why you think a gravitational wave mission would be especially costly (more so than any other large-class mission). ExoMars stuff, on the other hand, could have an effect if they go ahead with plans to divert money from science budget.

I don't know where you're getting that time scale from being as they've been indicating that they want to bring forward as soon as possible the mission I thought to the late 2020s.